The Beatles on iTunes tomorrow?

That’s what the WSJ is reporting. Forget the Republicans taking over the world, this is the biggest news of 2010.

When I was a freshman at BGSU in 1985, I took a class called “The History of Rock and Roll”, which at the time was a ground breaking pop culture offering at any college. The first class, our professor opened the hour by playing the number one song on the Billboard charts in 1964 the week before the Beatles arrived, which was Bobby Vinton’s “There I Said It Again.” Then he played “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, which topped the charts the next week.

Try that sometime. It’s like hearing a brick crash through a window. A stroke of genius by the professor, that is the closest anyone can get to understanding just what happened when The Beatles…happened. That big bang started the clock ticking on a mere 7 years in which one rock and roll band basically changed everything.

I’ve studied no rock group more. We used to gather in the basements of friends’ houses to listen to Abbey Road in the dark when I was in high school, in 1984-85. Memorized the lyrics to Sgt. Pepper from the back of the album cover. My favorite of all their masterpieces is Revolver, which captures the moment they went from pop band to genius almost exactly, in real time, from the first rollicking rock track Taxman to the last one, surreal psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows, leaving you wondering how the hell they found the balls to pull that off in 1966. 1966!!

I’ve always suspected they knew just how much impact they were having at the time, and would have forever, as The Beatles flashed through culture like a comet in less than a decade. Which is probably why they took this long to go digital. There are eras, and then there is timelessness. Whatever our era ends up being known for, we will always be the ones entering theirs.

What’s the big deal? If you’re a Beatles fan you probably have the CDs. Rip them and play on your i-Device. Hell, get a USB turntable and rip your vinyl man!

They took this long to go digital – at least on iTunes due to several legal disputes between Apple Corp (owned by the Beatles) and Apple Computer that developed bad blood over the years. Probably some royalty disputes of late as well.

I don’t have any Beatles on my iPod now and probably won’t after tomorrow either. The news is still a big deal though. I wonder who won the state down?

Anonymous

A freshman in 1985?????? What a youngster! I saw The Beatles live in concert on September 14, 1964, at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. Cost of my ticket $5.90.